Sunday, April 25, 2010

Harrison turned 14 months old today. Can you believe it, 'cause I can't.

And no, he's still not sleeping through the night. Whatever.

We were visiting some dear friends down in the Chicago area yesterday, and they remarked that Harrison, with his almost-white blonde hair, looks like his name should be Bjorn. It's nice to hear that, although Baby Bjorn has all of his daddy's facial features and looks like he will have his daddy's body type as well, some of his mommy's Norwegian genes made it through...And you will never, ever be able to convince me to cut that beautiful boy's hair.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Out of Grace's mouth, within a span of about 10 minutes this afternoon:

Grace: (pulling me by the arm into the living room as I was cleaning up the kitchen) Mama, pretend you REALLY love it when me and Harrison make a mess. Because I have something to show you that you will LOVE...

Then, a few minutes later...

Grace: Mama, do you know how to do the "Hand Job"?

Me: *spits out coffee*

Grace: *blank stare*

Me: (recovering) I'm sorry...do I know how to do the what?

Grace: The "Hand Job"

Me: (cringing inwardly) What do you mean?

Grace: (demonstrates the Hand JIVE) See, this. We learned this in school.

Me: Oh, the Hand JIVE. Yes I do know how to do that.

Then we practiced saying "Hand JIVE" over and over again until I was sure Grace would never make that same mistake again.

Monday, April 19, 2010

We found a long-lost stack of pink heart-shaped Post-It Notes in a box that I was going through this weekend, and Grace had a field day drawing little pictures on the notes. Today, as I was speeding around the house, cleaning up before my Monday got started, I picked up the pictures to throw them away (I mean, to put them in my treasure box to hold on to and, well, treasure for the rest of my days), but then I stopped to look at them a little closer. Two things became clear to me. One: Grace is a far better artist than I ever was as a young kid, let alone at age five. Two: Wow...Grace is a really good, even gifted, artist in general. Look at the detail on some of these. Bangs fall in front of the person's eyes in a few of them. Some of them have freckles. A couple of them have beauty marks. There are different hairstyles, different facial expressions...

I know every parent thinks their Little Picasso is the best, but I gotta say, I'm pretty darn impressed. I might hang on to these after all.